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Yahoo to End Facebook, Google Sign-In on Its Web Properties

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Re: Yahoo to End Facebook, Google Sign-In on Its Web Properties

#21

Post by microtonal »

alook wrote: post #7
frankc wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yahoo has a good fantasy sports platform. They might be the leader there though espn may have passed them by now.

Under Marissa Mayer's watch, Yahoo has been investing tremendous effort in refining the UX on their web/mobile properties like Yahoo Weather [1], Flickr [2], and Yahoo Sports [3]. Seems like they're giving people a reason to use their products, and then making a play to have an OAuth-level relationship with the users. Maybe they want visibility into how a user authorizes third-party apps (FB gets an awful lot of insi…

Under Marissa Mayer's watch, Yahoo has been investing tremendous effort in refining the UX on their web/mobile properties like Yahoo Weather [1], Flickr [2], and Yahoo Sports [3].

Actually, the recent changes made me quit Flickr. It's now an ugly mixture of new and old (especially if you use the organiser, etc.) and when you are logged in (which is likely when you use Flickr) you get an unremovable, ugly, purple Yahoo bar.

I was a paying user since 2009. Now Smugmug gets my (and my wife's) money.

Re: Yahoo to End Facebook, Google Sign-In on Its Web Properties

#22

Post by microtonal »

wise_young_man wrote: post #9
null_ptr wrote: post #6

Good! The less that people see Google and Facebook accounts as "Global Internet Identity Accounts" , the better.

I disagree. The more people use Social login and the less people use their one shared password on all sites which tends to be "password1", the better.

It's a bit of an improvement. On the other hand, if that one account is hacked, it gives access to everything else as well. Moreover, you can even get a list of applications/sites tied to that account. Which makes it arguably even less secure.

If we want people to be safer, we should learn them how to use a password manager to generate a unique password for every site.

And since access to passwords requires two things (the password to the password manager and the password database), it's arguably more secure, even with a weak password.

Re: Yahoo to End Facebook, Google Sign-In on Its Web Properties

#23

Post by joelrunyon »

blueskin_ wrote: post #19

I wonder how many of the 10 remaining Yahoo users will be inconvenienced by this. Seriously though, this is a good thing - third party sign in is a horrible idea and should die.

I would say you have a very bubble-ized perspective of who actually uses Yahoo. You'd be amazed at the non-tech people that aggregate on their services.

Re: Yahoo to End Facebook, Google Sign-In on Its Web Properties

#24

Post by tobiasu »

ampersandy wrote: post #20
blueskin_ wrote: post #19

I wonder how many of the 10 remaining Yahoo users will be inconvenienced by this. Seriously though, this is a good thing - third party sign in is a horrible idea and should die.

Why is it a horrible idea? I worked on the Site Integrity team at Facebook and I can assure you that protecting people's accounts from attackers is a fundamentally hard problem that very few companies are actually equipped to handle.

Ah yes, the good samaritians over at facefuck, providing a service for free. (Leave it to us, you're too stupid to handle this...)

Your disgusting business motives and my (consumer) interests do not align, at all.

Re: Yahoo to End Facebook, Google Sign-In on Its Web Properties

#25

Post by derefr »

nitrogen wrote: post #12
wise_young_man wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. The more people use Social login and the less people use their one shared password on all sites which tends to be "password1", the better.

The user's single identity should be owned by the user and managed securely by the browser, not by Facebook or Google.

Why do you think users want to own their identities?

Users, when you ask them, want a service that handles the backup and synchronization of their identity between all their devices. Users don't want losing the device their keys are on to mean losing their identity. Users want to be able to join a new device to their identity by just entering their username and password on it. Users want to be able to enter those credentials on random public computers to be able to temporarily use their identity on those computers, then log out when done. And users don't care about the security implication of any of this.

Currently, given this set of use-cases, "identity providers" like Facebook and Google work perfectly for users. Password managers don't.

Re: Yahoo to End Facebook, Google Sign-In on Its Web Properties

#26

Post by mattmanser »

kevincrane wrote: post #16
specialp wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yahoo runs many services that have traffic that most start-ups here would die for. Number one finance site,number one news site, huge fantasy sports, Flickr, Delicious, significant search traffic. People on HN tend to dismiss them but we are indeed talking one of the most trafficked websites on Earth. I would say there is more value having a Yahoo ID than most other sites due to how much they offer.

It's not popular but I think Yahoo Mail is way better than a lot of people give it credit for as well.

A brief bit of googling shows Yahoo mail has similar numbers of users as Hotmail and Gmail, somewhere between 200-400 millionish, hard numbers aren't often announced.

So it's popular, though has lost it's top spot.

Re: Yahoo to End Facebook, Google Sign-In on Its Web Properties

#27

Post by Robin_Message »

tobiasu wrote: post #24
ampersandy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it a horrible idea? I worked on the Site Integrity team at Facebook and I can assure you that protecting people's accounts from attackers is a fundamentally hard problem that very few companies are actually equipped to handle.

Ah yes, the good samaritians over at facefuck, providing a service for free. (Leave it to us, you're too stupid to handle this...) Your disgusting business motives and my (consumer) interests do not align, at all.

That's pretty uncalled for. If you met a Facebook developer in person would you talk to them like that?

Facebook provides a service people find genuinely useful, or they probably wouldn't keep using it.

Their business motives don't seem much different from other large businesses, and their impact on consumer interests seem minimal (e.g. compare them to Target's accidental pregnancy revelations – which is worse?)

The are pushing society in new and interesting directions on privacy, but I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing, nor is it their fault (e.g. the invention of personal cars changed society a lot, positively and negatively, but no-one blames car companies.)

On the substantive point, when you see the number of credential leaks and account hijackings out there, maybe telling most developers "You're too busy and inexperienced to handle this well; we have many well paid experts working on this" is a good thing.

Re: Yahoo to End Facebook, Google Sign-In on Its Web Properties

#28

Post by okasaki »

microtonal wrote: post #21
alook wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under Marissa Mayer's watch, Yahoo has been investing tremendous effort in refining the UX on their web/mobile properties like Yahoo Weather [1], Flickr [2], and Yahoo Sports [3]. Seems like they're giving people a reason to use their products, and then making a play to have an OAuth-level relationship with the users. Maybe they want visibility into how a user authorizes third-party apps (FB gets an awful lot of insi…

Under Marissa Mayer's watch, Yahoo has been investing tremendous effort in refining the UX on their web/mobile properties like Yahoo Weather [1], Flickr [2], and Yahoo Sports [3]. Actually, the recent changes made me quit Flickr. It's now an ugly mixture of new and old (especially if you use the organiser, etc.) and when you are logged in (which is likely when you use Flickr) you get an unremovable, ugly, purple Yaho…

The Flickr redesign has been the worst UI change I've ever seen on the web. I've been on Flickr since 2007 and really enjoyed its interface - much like reddit (pre- custom subreddit styles) it was clean and fast. Now it's ugly, confusing and very sluggish.

Re: Yahoo to End Facebook, Google Sign-In on Its Web Properties

#29

Post by Fuxy »

Who in their right mind would use their FB login on other websites anyway.

I personally tend to avoid it like the plague.

Every time you use it you grant another website access to your Facebook profile data.

I don't think i want to share that.

Now i know there's some security there but honestly I don't thrust it Facebook is leaky enough as it is I would rather not push my luck by giving permissions to unnecessary things.

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